Scratch in the Mirror – Introduction

UPDATE: Congratulations, Bubba Watson, the 2012 Masters champion!

I'm happy for your win, even though, as the first natural left-handed golfer to win a professional major, you're forcing me to re-write the introduction to Scratch in the Mirror!

 

But that's OK, you can make it up to me by granting me an interview for the chapter on the mental/spiritual side of golf. Please contact me at mikezim883@yahoo.com. Thanks!)

A draft of the Introduction to Scratch in the Mirror ...

Want to win a few bets at the 19th hole? Ask the others in your foursome how many lefties have won major championships in golf. Your knowledgeable friends will say three: Bob Charles, Mike Weir, and Phil Mickelson.
    Imagine their shock and surprise when you tell them – as you hastily collect your winnings – that none of those guys is a real lefty. Each is actually right-handed, but plays golf from the sinister side.
    Now imagine their rage when they realize you’ve tricked them. Fisticuffs ensue. Since you’re outnumbered three-to-one, they easily beat you to a pulp and take back their winnings. They also take your watch and the rest of the cash in your wallet, just for good measure.
    Man, who are these guys!? Why you would want to play golf with three jerks like that is beyond me, but who am I to judge another man’s friends?
    Later, in the ER, you tell your wife what happened and she asks the obvious question: “Well …? If not Charles, Weir, and Mickelson [your wife is very knowledgeable about golf; that’s why you married her], what is the right answer? Have any actual left-handers ever won a major professional golf championship?”
    A smile creeps across your bloodied face, but you wince only slightly at the pain. “Johnny Miller,” you gasp. “Greg Norman. Curtis Strange. Nick Price. David Graham. Byron Nelson.”
    A hush falls as doctors, nurses, assorted orderlies, and the little old lady in the waiting room stop what they’re doing and draw silently closer, hanging on your every word. Everyone is astonished by the revealed wisdom that has already passed your swollen lips, but you’re not done yet. With strength fading, you summon another breath and whisper, like Charles Foster Kane spitting out “Rosebud”: “Hogan.”
    A nurse faints. In the hallway, a bedpan crashes to the floor. Across the pond, a chill wind blows through “Hogan’s Alley” at Carnoustie.
    “They’re all naturally left-handed,” you explain. “They only play golf right-handed.”
    A tear runs down your wife’s cheek as she turns to the attending physician and says, “Doctor, my husband is obviously delirious and in great pain. Can you do something?”
    Shaking his head with a sad and concerned look, the doctor lowers a mask to your face. Moments later the room goes dark and all is quiet.
    In retrospect, maybe you should have just stuck to the conventional wisdom. Or at least made the stakes a little lower.

• • •

Ever since I was a kid first taking up the game of golf, I was taught that the left hand is, or should be, the dominant hand in a right-handed golf swing. “You’re using too much right hand!” was my dad’s most consistent piece of advice. “Let your left hand pull the club through; don’t push it through with your right.”
    How can that be? I always wondered. I throw with my right hand. I write with my right hand. I hit my annoying younger brother with my right hand. Why wouldn’t I use my right hand more to swing a golf club?
    And, assuming it’s true that I shouldn’t, wouldn’t it make sense for me, as a right-handed person, to play golf left-handed?
    That thought has haunted me ever since. And so when Phil the Thrill, the right-handed lefty, first burst onto the scene by winning the U.S. Amateur and a boatload of college titles (not to mention a PGA victory) as a young amateur, I assumed he was a product of just such a theory. Surely, I thought, someone must have groomed him to play as a southpaw with an eye toward testing this theory – and hopes of turning him into a world-class player.

Some Nice Publicity

Big thanks to Dennis McCann for his nice blog post at wisgolfer.com! (And to Coach Carl for saying such nice things about my lefty game!)

"GOLF IN THE MIRROR"

The staff and management at Scratch in the Mirror appreciate your interest and support.

Crossing the Finish Line

Well, the official "learning to play left-handed golf" part of the project came to an end last weekend, with the 2011 "White Lake Classic." This venerable event began 25 years ago when a group of friends were invited to a family cottage on White Lake in Michigan to perform manual labor in exchange for free lodging and golf. It has since evolved into the golf season's true "fifth major," with bragging rights and a true monstrosity of a traveling trophy on the line for the winner.
     This year, it was also the designated "finish line" for the Scratch in the Mirror book project, the official end of the one-year commitment.
     How does it all end? You'll have to buy the book to find out! Suffice it to say that a great time was had by all, as usual. I'll also go so far as to divulge that I did not win the trophy (for what would have been a record-extending seventh time!). No, the coveted title this year went to Dr. Tom Scaggs, who overcame severe injuries incurred in a recent ATV accident (lesson: friends don't let friends videotape and drive) to win rather handily. Congratulations, L.T.! ("Little Tommy")
     Pictured here are the six surviving participants on the first tee at the White Lake Golf Club (a.k.a. "The Burial Place of Old Man Gloom"): Mike "Zim" Zimmerman, Rob "The Glacier" Twardock, Mike "Scruffy" Neuses, Tom "Scagg-bagger" Scaggs, Tom "Serbo" Lessaris, and Keith "Keith" Staggs.

    

Chapter 1: A Golfing Memoir

A draft of Chapter 1 of Scratch in the Mirror – let me know if you think it's really boring! (Especially if you don't know me!)

“You tried your best and you failed miserably.

 The lesson is, ‘Never try.’”

– Homer Simpson

It’s quite a trick to get kicked out of band at age 9. But there I was, on the verge of tears, face to face with Mr. Picker: “If you’re not going to practice,” he said matter-of-factly, “you may as well not come back next week.”

Practice. Ugh. The very word sent shivers of disgust through my body. I mean, why practice when you could play? This was my attitude throughout most of my young life (and to a lesser extent, today). It’s not that I didn’t want to be good at things – whether it was baseball, piano, football, tennis, trombone, or golf. I enjoyed doing them all. I just didn’t want to practice. Not in the traditional sense, anyway.

Take my trombone. Please.

            When I was in grade school, my mom, a former music teacher, thought it was outrageous that the school system didn’t have us learning band instruments prior to the fifth grade. So she convinced the powers that be to let me start trombone lessons a year early. True, the trombone was my choice (I was drawn to the cool “slidey” thing), but I don’t remember having any urgent desire to learn a musical instrument.

            Oh, I played it. I just paid little attention to the notes on the page. I loved making noise with it, and figuring out how it worked, and by and large doing my own thing. But I had a complete aversion to performing the prescribed drills. And since, for better or worse, my parents weren’t great at enforcing good practice habits (and I’m sure it had nothing to do with my resistance!), there were times when the entire week between my lessons would go by without my trombone ever once being liberated from its case.

            But as much as I hated to practice, I dreaded even more that moment when Mr. Picker would realize I hadn’t kept up my end of the deal. He would put down his little white stick, sigh, pause for dramatic effect, look at me with disapproval oozing out of his pores, and say something like, “Did you practice at all this week?”

            “Yeah!”

            Yeah, right! would be more like it.

            It got so bad that one time he eventually told me I might as well not bother. I think he meant it rhetorically, but I took it as, “Don’t come back, you’re hereby officially banished from band!”

            Banned from band – at the tender age of 9.

            Getting scolded by my band director was one thing; disappointing my parents – my mom, in particular – was quite another. I knew how important music was to her, so I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell her I’d been kicked to the curb. I think I would rather have told her I’d been caught peeing in the sink. So when band day arrived a week later I tried to sneak out of the house without my trombone. But my mom saw leaving: “Don’t forget your trombone, Mike!”

            Busted.

            Now, I suppose I could have sustained the charade and just brought the blasted hunk of brass to school anyway. But I hated carrying that thing the four blocks (both ways!) that required. It was heavy! Oh, how I envied those fifth-grade girls carrying around their tiny little flutes!

            So I chose confession over physical labor and burdensome guilt. “Mom, I need to tell you something,” I started to say, with tears welling up in my sad little eyes.

            Somewhat to my surprise, my mom was very understanding as I told her my pathetic tale. Yet what she did not say was, “Don’t worry, if you don’t want to take trombone lessons, you don’t have to.” What she did say was, “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to the band director and straighten things out.”

            Gee, thanks, Mom.

            Against steep odds, I did learn to enjoy playing the trombone and by high school became modestly proficient – without hardly ever practicing. And if I hadn’t kept at it, I never would have met and fell in love with the sweet and lovely Barb Alexander, a fellow freshman and lady trombonist. Our relationship lasted nearly four years, all through high school. Who knows, it might have lasted even longer if I had ever summoned the courage to ask her out.

A Memorable Chance Encounter

UPDATE: I managed to reach Charles Barkley's rep -- who told me that Charles has given up on left-handed golf! (I think this may be a scoop -- remember, you read it here first!) He also told me that the Round Mound declined my request for an interview. Oh, well. No reason I can't ask again when the book is farther along and I have more "credibility"! I'd still like to talk to him about his experience giving it a try.

I'll have more information on this as things develop, but for now, long story short: I met NBA legend Bill Walton at the top of 6,000-foot Mt. Laguna outside San Diego yesterday. I had ridden a motorcycle to the top; he had ridden his bicycle. How impressive is that? And he's as nice as he is fit. During the course of our conversation I told him about my book project, and he's going to help me get in touch with Charles Barkley for an interview about his foray into left-handed golf!
     Here's the photographic evidence of our memorable meeting:

Breaking Lefty News ...

From the AP, via pgatour.com:

Barkley may switch to lefty for Tahoe celeb golf

RENO, Nev. (AP) -- June 9, 2011 -- It's hard to tell sometimes when Charles Barkley is joking, but it's also hard to watch him play golf.
     So, there's a decent chance he wasn't kidding when he told reporters on Thursday he's seriously considering playing left-handed next month at the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship at Lake Tahoe.
     As Barkley put it: "It can't be worse."
     The NBA Hall of Famer turned TV analyst said it isn't like he's enjoyed a whole lot of success playing right-handed.
     Known for the hitch in his stop-and-go swing, Barkley routinely finishes last at the annual tourney at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course. He's a 500-1 longshot to win this year's tourney July 15-17.
     Barkley says he's just as bad from the left side but seems to be more relaxed.

I'd heard inklings that he was working on this. Go HERE to see a YouTube video of Barkley's work-in-progress lefty swing at whifflingstraits.com.

On the Tee: My Official Lefty Debut

VIDEO UPDATE:

You can tell I'm a little nervous by the way I ignore/forget about the camera after the shot and immediately walk over to the cart, already thinking about the next one. The tee shot (with a 5-wood) ended up clipping the trees on the right before bending back onto the right side of the fairway, very short. I ended up with a triple-bogey 8 on the par-5 opening hole, but followed that with a double, then a bogey, a par, and then very nearly a birdie (I missed about an 8-foot putt) on the short par-3 5th. After that I started thinking a little too much about scoring, instead of taking it shot by shot, hole by hole, but ended up with 49-53 for a 102.
     Not bad for the first time out! It could have been a little better (I wasted more strokes around the green than I would have expected), but it certainly could have also been a lot worse. I'll take it!

Later, on the 18th tee, Rob, Keith, and Scruffy took a turn from the sinister side:



-----------------------------------
On June 3, three good friends and I are scheduled to play what will be my first official 18-hole round of left-handed golf – at Morningstar Golfers Club in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Why Morningstar? Simple: it's going to be free! (And because it looks like a very nice course.)
     Back in March, my son Jack and I attended the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Golf Show at Wisconsin State Fair Park. If you've ever been to a golf show like this one, you'll know that there are LOTS of opportunities to enter drawings. Jack, being 9, was very interested in trying to win some fabulous prizes. So I told him he could enter as many drawings as he likes as long as he fills out the entry slips himself. Surprise, surprise, that condition severely curtailed his interest in winning a new car or golfing vacation. But he did still manage to scrawl his name and contact information on a few entry forms.
     Much to my surprise, a few weeks later we got a call that Jack had won four free passes for 18 holes of golf at Morningstar! A few days after that, four coupons showed up in the mail – with no designated recipient and no fine print that I could see about them being "non-transferrable."
     Now, officially these passes belonged to my son, of course. But Jack is not ready to play such a course yet – nor did he seem to have have any particular interest in doing so anyway. So I made him a deal: I would take the passes off his hands in exchange for a new Wii Sports Resort game and the promise to take him to a "real" golf course (as opposed to a par-3) more his speed sometime soon. As long as it has sand traps, he said (he has a strange fascination with sand traps), that would be awesome.
     So I contacted three of my best golfing friends and set a date to join them at Morningstar for what promises to be a rollicking good time: nerve-wracking and challenging for me; entertaining and potentially hilarious for them. I expect they will show no mercy as I put my lefty game to its first official test. Nor would I want them to, as this is how golf is meant to be played: amidst the heckling and laughter of your best friends in the world.